When GOP strategist Karl Rove lost his cool on Fox News Tuesday night and refused to accept the network’s decision to call Ohio for Obama and effectively end the race, it illustrated the Republican party’s belief-centric approach to this year’s election.

More importantly, it perfectly encapsulates the Republican party’s stance on climate science. Rather than trust all those scientists who use complicated models and observation, the modern Republican political pundit uses his “gut” and his “belief” to determine reality.

If you haven’t seen the full Rove clip, watch it. Or better yet, watch John Stewart’s take below, which more appropriately points out the absurdity of the incident.

“You can go through all the scientific gobbledegook you like, I don’t believe it,” said Fox’s Stewart Varney, mocking New York Times’ Nate Silver for his “scientific” approach to poll tracking — a strategy that ultimately proved dead-on correct in predicting the election results.

In post-election coverage, Fox host Megyn Kelly confronted Rove on his dismissal of the Ohio results: “Is this the math you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better? One could easily replace the word “math” with “science” and sum up the party’s stance on climate change.

(Hat tip to Sam Ricketts for flagging the clip and pointing out the climate connection).

Shows how the choice to live in “gated communities” (figuratively and physically) accentuates the human desire for “confirmation bias”. The result often leaves such people far from reality.

I read articles that said Mitt and Ryan were genuinely shocked that they lost. Hello? The polling data was clear all along but they chose to only believe their own “unskewed” polling that gave them the result they wanted.

Hmmm, the need for “unskewed” data to confirm one’s view of how the world should be…remind anyone else of the temperature record fracas ala Watt and others?

One needs to understand the effect Romney’s religion had on him to comprehend his disbelief in losing. Since he was young, Romney’s been groomed to believe he would fulfill the Mormon Church’s White Horse Prophecy, which states that a Mormon would be elecetd POTUS to save the nation as the Contitution would be hanging by a thread. Romney obviously believes in his own religious teachings, thus the surprise. People aren’t generally aware of this, but it was all over the Mormon blogs before the election (I live in Utah).

The Right are not necessarily the intellectual cream of the crop. Hence magical thinking is more popular than hard rationality, which often involves some more or less profound, headache-inducing, cogitation. Revealed wisdom and ‘faith’ are so much easier, giving more spare time for lucrative pursuits. Moreover the Rightist is an egotist, and habitually regards the external world as a mere plaything of his consciousness. After all the human mind has confected everything from ‘Gods’ who bear an uncanny resemblance to their creators to economic systems based on infinite growth on a finite planet (I see that the OECD is predicting 3% growth on average in the global economy out to 2050- in their dreams!). Mere laws of physics, atmospheric chemistry and climate science must bow down before the superior truth of ‘gut feelings’ or revelation.
Unfortunately, and this is why I am a pessimist, there are continuums in humanity of the prevalence of all sorts of traits, from intelligence to the propensity for violence. This is precisely why sham democracy camouflaging elite rule by the insatiably greedy and intensely egomaniacal, is such a recipe for disaster. We have to rest the chances of survival for our species on the vagaries of the dumber 50% of the populace, who, to make matters both worse and laughable, are relentlessly brainwashed by a ruthless and utterly immoral Rightwing MSM brainwashing machine.

Just to offer a partial dissent, when that call of Ohio for Obama first came in, Rove’s question was a reasonable one to ask. After all, the state was very close at that point (Romney even led sometimes) with a lot left to count. I asked that question myself as I watched on another network (I forget which one). Then someone on that network wondered the same thing and went to the statisticians, who gave the same answer – that the great majority of uncounted votes were from the heavily Democratic northern Ohio areas. Then I thought, “OK, I get it. I’ll let myself relax a little.” Of course, the observational test was to watch and see if it worked – just like in science. Rove and others on Fox had fallen into the trap of getting their news from people who share their biases. That is why I don’t allow myself to watch MS-NBC very much.

I am so sick of the conservative whining in america. we are split in this country voting wise. Maybe we need a 3rd party to step forward. For sure if congress and senate do nothing again, I say vote all of them out of office. That is where the problem is. Take all the money spent and help re-build america,no more wars, no more global cop.